Educational content or materials that are available at no cost or low cost to the reader, student, or teacher and that are often openly licensed.

OERs can be used for teaching, learning, research, and other purposes. OERs include courses, course materials, content modules or learning objects, collections, and journals. OERs also comprise tools for delivering education content such as software that supports the creation, delivery, use, and improvement of open learning content; searching and organizing of content; content and learning management systems; content development tools; and online learning communities.

The costs associated with the creation and maintenance of OERs are often covered by grants or other funds, which make it possible for the content to be free of charge for readers and users.

The following is a list of OER platforms that are currently available for adoption.

• The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
• Connexions/OpenSTAXS
• panOpen
• Open Textbook Library
• Cool4ED, California Open Online Library for Education
• Hewlett Foundation OER page
• MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)
• The Open Course Library
• OER Commons
• The Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation
• The Open University (OU)
• WikiEducator
• The World Digital Library (WDL)

Yes. You can request that we investigate the option of providing a print version for your students. Some OER materials, such as Open Stax, have low-cost print versions available, and the University Store will stock them for interested students.

In some situations, it may be possible for the University Store to create a printed course reader from OER materials. As OER materials are copyright free, this can be an inexpensive option.